Opioid Addiction
Opioid addiction continues to rise and with that so do the deaths time to this drug abuse. It is a combination of prescription painkillers from OxyContin to Percocet including the use of heroin. Doctors have been prescribing drugs at alarming rates over the past few decades as drug prices have gone down. People have been given these pills for major pain and even minor ailments. The issue is once you are on them, sometimes it is super hard to get off.
Veterans who have returned from wars have been issued drugs for depression, pain, sleep and more. These drugs make you feel like shit and it is easy to fall into a cocktail of these with no way out. The answer is quite easy on how pharma drugs have been given out with ease vs cannabis. It is about pharma making sure that their products continue to make their way into the hands of many without truly caring about the repercussions….aka the opioid crisis.
There was an incredible piece in the NY Times Op Ed written by Thomas James Brennan, a retired Marine Corp Veteran making the case for making it cannabis legal for Veterans with traumatic brain injury, like himself. Brennan came home injured from Afghanistan and was given a slew of cocktails from the Department of Veterans. It did not make him better, actually mentally it made him worse until a friend gave him a joint.
With help from a local doctor, he began to use cannabis products to medicate himself. He slowly found his relationships getting better. He began to feel good again. His mind was less clouded with pharma drugs. What he found is all the research around cannabis is not being used to treat people. The pharma industry has no interest in the positive information around cannabis products coming to light because less money for them.
The cannabis products are helpful for patients with pain..and more. It is high time that we start reading the data out there and start treating those in need with products that are better everyone in the long run. Nipping the opioid crisis in the bud has to also start at the beginning of the treatments that are so easily written on a piece of paper and given out to people in pain that find themselves with addiction problems later in their life.
Comments (Archived):
I only know about the pharma world from my touch points in the supplement segment.This is wrath of god money that drives everything.I think it can be disrupted but beyond me where to start on this one.
Cannabis.
It certainly has the money behind it as well.I’ll think on this.
If there was “real” money to be made with pot, like fat pharma money, pharma would put their scientists to work and create some truly amazing strains that could/would help so many in fantastic ways. But wait, that would cut into sales of their overpriced meds which are pushed like candy. Just a thought!
I am quite sure pharma is dipping their toes quite heavily in this space.
I can’t speak to the effectiveness of cannabis for medical issues–specifically pain and pain due to surgical recovery. But, I echo the concern about how doctors/insurance companies overprescribe. For my hip replacement in 2014, the amount of opiods prescribed was way too much. I queried the hospital and was told by the pharmacy that it costs the same for 7 pills or 70. The pills I prescribed lasted through another hip replacement and two major dental surgeries. And yet, still have leftovers. I questioned the protocol back then before there was a known “crisis.” It was crazy. Maybe still is?
It is crazy.